Hey. I’m in the process of helping a good friend set up Power Berserker, so while it’s on my mind, here’s most of what I know about my favorite profession in Guild Wars 2.

If you’re looking for a straightforward build guide, this is the wrong place: this thing is more of a Build-A-Bear Workshop¹ approach to the profession, and assumes that you have some preferences about your personal version of the power fantasy, rather than defaulting to a premade build.

• Why pZerker?
• Weapons
• Gear
• Berserker Traits
• Supplementary Traits
• Utility Skills
• Playstyle
• Further Resources

Why pZerker?

Vanilla Warrior is GW2’s version of the “weapon master” fantasy, and that’s cool. But if you want something rougher around the edges, that something is Power Berserker.

It’s fast, pissed-off, unrestrained, and can tackle almost all content in the game—including other players—with the same core playstyle principles.

• Fast: very little downtime, you’re always rewarded for staying busy
• Faster: full-uptime solo quickness with a single trait swap
• Versatile: can be tweaked for group boons, extra bulk, or pure damage
• Durable by default: a practical way of playing a pure-melee character
• Great animation work, with access to Warrior’s most satisfying skills
• Hear your character’s murderous screaming every time you start an encounter

Weapons

• Axe: Spectacular Adrenaline gain through Discipline’s Axe Mastery, and a Primal Burst that recharges itself. Best-in-class single-target damage.
• Greatsword: Lots of movement skills, great at dealing with control effects. Arc Divider is absurdly powerful 360° cleave, great in every context and especially infamous in WvW zerging. Hundred Blades can make it feel a little stop-and-go.
• Hammer: Great Defiance damage, plays nicely with the durable Defense traitline. Rupturing Smash gives you AoE CC and cleave. Feels appropriately brutal.
• Staff: Decent crowd control, great direct healing, and lots of Aegis and movement skills. Good for support and for personal bulk. It’s not a caster staff, it’s a bonkstick!
• Dagger: You don’t really care about the boonstrip, but Slicing Maelstrom is basically Arc Divider 2, making Dagger a sensible choice for quick cleave sequences.
• Warhorn: Your only real support option besides Staff. With supportive stats, the barrier’s nothing to sneeze at.
• Mace: Mediocre damage, but some active defense. Good for extra defiance damage on supports: Hammer uses both hands and prevents the use of Warhorn.
• Rifle: Boring and not particularly effective, but it’s ostensibly your ranged option. Gunflame, a long-range nuke, allows glass-cannon Berserker builds to do some funny stuff versus human opponents.
• Longbow: Not really a Power weapon, but used in WvW zerging builds when staying in melee isn’t practical. (Goes to show how underwhelming Rifle is.)

Gear

Stats

• Berserker is damage-optimal—and cheap! It’s hardly a glass-cannon setup, despite the lack of defensive stats; if you have survivability trouble, it’s easy to swap traits and food.
• Marauder stats are bulkier, but still damage-focused. Typically recommended for WvW zerging, since closing to melee range versus 50 pissed-off human players can be pretty scary; maximizing damage comes second to sheer overwhelming numbers.
• Celestial stats are hyper-durable all-rounders. They’re often recommended for solo play and WvW roaming, and they’re a decent choice for light support, but the damage drop is substantial (say goodbye to an easy crit cap!), and you very rarely need the bulk that they offer.²
• Minstrel / Harrier stats are for purely supportive variants focused on Staff. Harrier trades Minstrel’s bulk for Power, so it does better damage—and fits better into instanced fights where boss aggro is based on Toughness.

Runes

• Scholar runes are the default for a reason. pZerker crit caps easily, so the Power and Ferocity is exactly what you need.
• Eagle fulfills the same basic function as Scholar, but worse—and 20x less expensive. It’s a sensible compromise while learning, or if you don’t do high-end PvE.
• Traveler is dirt cheap, grants some bonus movespeed, and can be lazily slapped on a Celestial set to play every version of Berserker adequately, good for the indecisive or impatient (like me). Don’t put this into Power gear.
• Monk pairs nicely with a supportive armor set, for Staff users.

Sigils

• Force: It’s damage. Straightforward pick.
• Impact: It’s damage vs. defiant foes. Good for instanced PvE.
• Air: Occasional lightning strike on crit. A cheaper damage option.
• Cleansing removes conditions when swapping weapons, and Energy refills endurance on swap. Common in WvW roaming: active defense is strong against human opponents, and Discipline’s Cleansing Ire has some opportunity cost.
• Hydromancy applies point-blank Chill when swapping weapons. It’s a cheap combat trick versus human opponents, securing kills or stripping Aegis for Primal Bursts.
• Transference increases outgoing healing, and Concentration increases boon duration. Good for supports.
• Strength can be used with the Strength traitline’s “Might Makes Right” for improved survivability. Kinda gimmicky, but cute.

Relics

• Thief gives 5% largely-unconditional strike damage, nice for full-uptime situations where your durability needs are covered.
• Defender heals when you block a hit. It’s a nice way to sneak some survivability into your build: it truly shines on Staff, but Axe/Shield can work in a pinch. You can also trigger it from utility skills, like Shattering Blow, Sundering Leap, and Banner of Defense.
• Nourys: Periodically get swole, gaining bonus damage and heavy lifesteal. Get swole more often when you remove boons. As it turns out, removing your own boons can count for this—including blocking with Aegis!
• Monk: Increased healing effectiveness when applying boons. Purely supportive, for Staff users.
• Speed: Increased movespeed from Swiftness, purely for open-world tagging and farming. When paired with Strength’s Aggressive Onslaught, Discipline’s Burst Mastery, and Berserker’s Heat the Soul, you can actually hit the movespeed cap—which means that you’ll move faster than most characters even while affected by Cripple haha what

Berserker Traits

• Adept:
  • Smash Brawler grants a dumb amount of crit chance, and helps you maintain berserk mode forever.
  • Savage Instinct can be taken for survivability and disrespecting mechanics.
• Master:
  • Heat the Soul grants you and your whole group Quickness/Fury. This is an obvious pick on supports, but even in DPS gear, fast enough play can sustain these boons with full uptime—great for solo play and disorganized parties.
  • If you have a dedicated support covering those boons, use Blood Reaction for damage.
  • Dead or Alive helps with sustain in tough solo situations.
• Grandmaster:
  • Bloody Roar for straightforward power damage.
  • Eternal Champion for some very cool survivability tech.
    • Taking all three bottom traits removes some coziness and lowers your damage (it makes Discipline Axe feel really janky in particular), but gives you a huge amount of extra sticking power. This is the most straightforward adjustment to make if you’re struggling with a fight.

Supplementary Traits

Strength

• Adept:
  • Brave Stride is super cozy and plays nicely with Defense’s Stalwart Strength. Movement skill triggers are great for Greatsword, or any build that takes Staff for personal bulk.
  • Otherwise, Peak Performance can be safely taken for straightforward damage.
• Master:
  • No Might provider? Forceful Greatsword is a huge damage increase regardless of weapon, but obviously worth taking if you want to spend a lot of time with a Greatsword in your hands.
  • Otherwise, Great Fortitude offers good damage and a little extra safety.
• Grandmaster:
  • Berserker’s Power is fantastic: Primal Bursts have short enough cooldowns that you can easily keep it up at maximum intensity.
  • Might Makes Right can be used with Forceful Greatsword, the Tactics traitline, and other sources of might (like the Fried Golden Dumpling food!) for a huge sustain increase, even without bulky stats.
  • Aggressive Onslaught’s quickness is typically a waste, considering Berserker’s Heat The Soul—but it’s one of the few stacking movespeed increases in the game, which can be nice for open-world farming.

Note that Pinnacle of Strength gives flat critical chance, making it even easier to reach crit cap. Reckless Dodge also gives you a weird way to remove Blind—just roll into them!

Discipline

• Adept:
  • Warrior’s Sprint gives Staff and Greatsword tremendous mobility and sticking power, and works well with Burst Mastery. Movespeed’s great in all kinds of situations, not just combat encounters.
  • Stalwart Focus boosts outgoing healing, which obviously means more if you’re, uh, healing.
• Master:
  • Doubled Standards is a sensible pick for supports who aren’t running a full bar of shouts, especially in condition-heavy fights.
  • Brawler’s Recovery is good for personal survivability; versus players, it can clear lethal control effects, and in PvE it mitigates a ton of scratch damage from conditions.
• Grandmaster:
  • Axe Mastery is Axe, massively improving your ability to pump out fast Decapitates.
  • Otherwise, Burst Mastery helps you in like 20 different ways; it can help you keep up boons from Berserker’s Heat the Soul, stacks of Berserker’s Power (Strength), direct healing from Staff’s Rampart Splitter, or the movespeed increase from Aggressive Onslaught (Strength).

Defense

• Adept:
  • Cull the Weak is what Defense is all about—damage and durability that basically activates itself.
• Master:
  • Resilient Roll is great versus players and certain enemy types, since Blind and Weakness can really mess up single-hit Primal Bursts like Arc Divider and Rupturing Smash.
  • If you’re using Hammer, Merciless Hammer is huge: not only is it a big help with adrenaline, but the bonuses always apply to defiant foes, making it an automatic pick in instanced PvE.
  • Defy Pain can be regularly exploited with Head Butt, letting you disrespect mechanics and take big hits solo.
• Grandmaster:
  • Cleansing Ire helps a lot with incoming conditions, since you use burst skills so regularly. It basically makes Axe invulnerable to conditions, since Decapitate can be spammed so easily—but IMO, Defense doesn’t pair very well with Axe otherwise.
  • Hammer loves Stalwart Strength, which grants a steady damage increase and tons of stability.

Tactics

• Adept:
  • Leg Specialist is a straightforward damage increase for Dagger and Hammer.
  • Soldier’s Comfort is your only sensible way of granting Protection—Staff’s normal burst skill grants it, but its Primal Burst doesn’t!
• Master:
  • If you need condition removal more than you need might, Shrug It Off is sensible, and plays nicely with Shake It Off and Vigorous Shouts.
  • Empower Allies has great healing interactions with Mending Might and Strength’s Might Makes Right.
• Grandmaster:
  • Vigorous Shouts gives you accces to more on-demand healing, which can be great for saving teammates on a tight schedule.
  • Phalanx Strength synergizes with Mending Might to make you nearly immortal in groups.

Arms

Utility Skills

• Probable must-takes:
  • Blood Reckoning is your most potent healing skill as long as you can stay in combat, and allows you to use two Primal Bursts back to back. You haven’t lived until you heal to full from an Arc Divider.
  • Head Butt instantly maxes your adrenaline, but stuns you: combine it with Outrage to instantly enter Berserk.
    • Both Head Butt and Outrage are stunbreaks, so they’re occasionally useful in a pinch.
    • Head Butt is technically CC for breakbar damage.
• Berserk duration: Pick your favorite Rage skills, and add more until your Berserk stays up.
  • Sundering Leap is a movement skill, activating traits like Brave Stride.
  • Both Sundering Leap and Shattering Blow can block attacks.
  • Wild Blow is an easy substitution for extra breakbar damage.
  • Note that without the Smash Brawler trait, you’re basically guaranteed to drop Berserk eventually—don’t stress about it!
• Survivability:
  • Shake It Off is a versatile get-out-of-jail-free skill, clearing conditions and breaking stuns for your whole group.
  • With the Might synergies in the Tactics and Strength traitlines, For Great Justice is actually a pretty sizable heal, even in damage gear.
  • Banner of Defense’s Aegis can be helpful even for non-supports, but Healing Power helps it a fair amount.
  • Banner of Strength is another fun way to abuse the Strength and Tactics Might synergies.
  • Mending can replace Blood Reckoning if you’re under truly insane condition pressure, but try Defense’s Cleansing Ire or Discipline’s Brawler’s Recovery first.
• Support:
  • Warrior’s not great with sharing Stability, but Banner of Tactics helps.
  • All shouts work well with Tactics' Vigorous Shouts, but Shake It Off is great for survival, and Fear Me! is another damage multiplier if your group lacks a Vulnerability source.
• Greed:
  • If death’s not a concern, Signet of Might is a healthy damage boost.
  • If you’re struggling to crit cap, either because of gear setup or because you’ve taken defensive traits in Berserker, Signet of Fury might make up the last few percent.

Playstyle

Do I seriously just press everything off cooldown?

mostly yea

“When do I Primal Burst?”

NOW

“When do I Blood Reckoning?”

Immediately after using a Primal Burst, if it’s available.

“When do I Outrage?”

Ideally, on cooldown, using every other Outrage to stun-break out of Head Butt. In practice, these are likely to drift somewhat; if you’re playing a variant that can easily generate Stability, through traits like Brave Stride (Strength) or Stalwart Strength (Defense), you can probably just bash Outrage on CD and not worry about anything. You’re durable, being stunned in an enemy’s face genuinely isn’t the worst outcome.

“When do I use other Rage skills?”

On cooldown, unless you need to hold Wild Blow for CC, or hold Sundering Leap or Shattering Blow for blocking a specific attack.

“When do I weapon switch?”

When you have more useful things to do on your stowed weapon than your wielded weapon. Generally, this means you’ll switch weapons immediately after a Primal Burst, when you have few cooldowns left.

If you’re under pressure from a tough opponent, you’ll sometimes switch early if you need to activate a Sigil of Cleansing or Sigil of Energy, or quickly need to clear a condition through Brawler’s Recovery (Discipline). Same goes for defensive skills, like Shield 5, Greatsword 3, and the like; staying alive takes priority over damage!

“Okay, but I’m playing Axe/Axe. When do I weapon switch? Why do I weapon switch?”

To get the most value out of Blood Reckoning. This is why the raid build uses Greatsword: in your brief downtime where all your Axe skills are down, instead of auto-attacking, you swap to Greatsword, Arc Divider twice, and swap back once all your Axe skills are good to go.

“Do I hold Hammer 5 until I can refresh Hammer 2?”

yea

Further Resources

Most places that document raid builds also have some information on optimal single-target rotations. These assume full boon uptime, including quickness and alacrity, and a very specific set of max-damage traits—but you can usually pick up some vague ideas of skill priorities for general play or recovery, even if one isn’t outright listed. For instance, the “Axe Loop” listed on that page consistently uses combinations of 4>3, 2>3, and Headbutt/Outrage to build the adrenaline required for Decapitate; even if the timings for the rest don’t work out exactly, you can still steal that piece of the rotation and apply it whenever your skills are up.

The Discretize gear optimizer can help you find crit breakpoints and whatnot if you’re running weird gear combinations. Most people don’t need to worry about this.